Sheila did this, and as I cannot resist a good quiz, I shall do it too.

Worst Books Ever, or Five Hours of My Life I’ll Never Get Back

Five hours? I wish. I lost several days of my life, altogether, to crap like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, The Celestine Prophecy, Twilight, and others. As I get older, though, I get a lot less tolerant of bad books. I used to believe that I couldn’t really frame a full opinion of something fairly unless I read the whole thing. Now, if I think it sucks after a hundred pages, I’m only too glad to set it aside and say “It sucks.”

Books I Have Lied About Reading

Well, there were readings I was supposed to do in school that I never did, and only bluffed my way through in the discussions. Sometimes I was successful. Other times, less so.

Books I Have Lied About Liking

I don’t really do this. If I hate it, I hate it. Why not say so?

Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better

The Bridges of Madison County is a bizarre little book, but the movie is really, really, really good. And Goldfinger the movie is better than the book (even if it’s not my favorite Bond movie).

Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed

“Shame” isn’t the right word, but there are books that were once meaningful to me which I’ve now moved beyond. Much of Richard Bach’s output falls in this category. (More on my once-thriving relationship with Bach’s work here.)

Best Book Titles of All Time

The Lord of the Rings; They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; The Once and Future King; Lamb, or, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal; The Stars My Destination.

I love a good title.

Books That I Expected to Be Dirtier

Ummmm…I never really expect dirt in my books, so I have no idea.

My Real Guilty-Pleasure Reads, and Not the Decoys I Talk About Openly

Geez, why so much guilt? I feel no guilt about reading. I do keep dreaming about reading some book, and having some stranger squeal with delight as they see someone else reading their favorite book. This has never happened yet.

Books You Must Read Before You Die, but Would Rather Die Than Read

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: One day, I am going into the woods with The Brothers Karamazov, and only one of us is coming back alive.

Books I Refused to Read for a Long Time Because too Many (or the Wrong) People Recommended Them

Hmmmmm. Not really sure. I’m not one to avoid the popular thing because it’s popular; I will explore something popular out of curiosity, but since I tend to read stuff when I want, I might wait for years before reading something that was popular a while back. Harry Potter was up to Prisoner of Azkaban before I read him, for example.

Books I Read Only After Seeing the Movie

2001: A Space Odyssey; The Hobbit (referring to the animated version of the 1970s). I’m sure there are others, but none are leaping to mind right now.

Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read

Anything by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already

There was a writer named John J. Robinson who wrote a couple of terrific history books, Dungeon, Fire and Sword and Born in Blood, which deal with the Knights Templar and the Crusades and the formations of Freemasonry, respectively. He had a wonderful voice to his writing that I loved.

I also wonder why Caleb Carr has never done anything in his 1900s New York City after The Alienist and Angel of Darkness; I loved those books.

Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts

I can’t think of any, really.

Books in Which I Liked the Secondary Characters Better Than the Main Character, or Books in Which I Wanted to Beat the Main Character Senseless with a Tire Iron

Well, I certainly wanted to beat each and every one of the principles in Twilight to death!

Books I Lied About Reading and Then Wrote an A+ Term Paper On

I never did this. I never got an A+ on a paper, that is. I did get a couple of B’s.

Books I Lied About Reading/Liking Solely to Look Smart/Pretentious

Nope, I’ve never done this.

Books I Wish I Hadn’t Finished, or Worst. Ending. Ever.

The Yearling. I only read that book because it was required by my seventh grade teacher, who was utterly stunned when I wrote a caustic paper on how much I hated it. The whole “Young boy grows up when he must kill his beloved pet” mini-genre sickens me. (In other words, F*** Old Yeller.)

Books I Read after Oprah Recommended Them

I don’t pay any attention to Oprah’s book recommendations. At all. Not because I’m anti-Oprah, but because I don’t really care about her one way or the other. I know she’s a force of nature and all that, but she’s not really on my radar. (I did hear once that she said that she “doesn’t read science fiction”, which irritated me. But I wouldn’t ignore her on that basis.)

Books I Will Never Read Precisely Because Oprah Recommends Them

Yeah, what I just said.

Literary Characters I’ve Developed Crushes On

Princess Eilonwy in Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles; Jehane bet Ishak in GGK’s Lions of Al-Rassan; Lady Guinevere as portrayed in Gillian May’s Arthurian trilogy.

Books I Only Read to Impress Other People

Haven’t we covered this? I read what I want to read. If you’re not impressed, then sod off already.

Best Books Not to Read from Start to Finish, or Best Bathroom Books

Ahhhh! Get Fuzzy compendiums. (Hmmmm…is the right plural there “compendia”? Look that up, self.) Comics of all stripes. Books of nature photography. And cookbooks! I’ve planned entire weeks’ worth of meals in the bathroom. And I haven’t bought a copy in years, but Roger Ebert’s yearly collection of movie reviews always made great bathroom reading.

Books I Shouldn’t Admit Made Me Cry Like a Baby

Why shouldn’t I admit it? GGK’s Fionavar Tapestry hits me on the sweet spot every damn time I read it. I had to resort to lots of strategic throat-clearing when I was reading The High King aloud to The Daughter, especially in that final chapter.

Books I Only Read for the Title

I’m not really sure what this means. Titles catch my eye and pique my interest, to be certain. Many books I choose because the title caught me first.

Books I Re-Read When I Have Nothing Else to Read

I don’t do full re-reads all that often, but I do dip into favorite books a lot. Lord of the Rings, GGK, favorite scenes from Stephen King, et cetera. Any book I have read and enjoyed is fodder for dipping.

Books People Keep Recommending That, Frankly, Sucked Ass

I may sound like the proverbial broken record, but Jeez Louise, how could Twilight have been that awful? And don’t tell me “It’s a guy thing”, or “Well, you were never a teenage girl in love so you won’t know.” It was Stephenie Meyer‘s job to make me understand that, not mine. I’ve read a lot of popular stuff that I didn’t like all that much, but few that I’ve loathed to that degree.

Books My Teacher Made Me Read That I Really, Really Liked

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Johnny Tremain, The Scarlet Letter. Some others that I don’t recall.

Books My Teacher Made Me read That Made Me Question the Value of My Education

I didn’t care for Ordinary People. And the afore-mentioned The Yearling.

Here’s a true story: as we neared completion of The Yearling, we each had to write a paper in which we either recommended the book or didn’t. I didn’t, primarily because I found the book awfully boring, and I didn’t buy the central moral lesson. So I didn’t recommend it, and got something like a B- on my report. The kid next to me said the same things in his report, but at the end, he said, “I’d recommend the book anyway.” He actually asked the teacher, in class, why he got a higher grade when he too said the book was boring and the “Man up and kill your pet!” lesson was crap. The teacher sagely spread her hands and said, “You recommended it. There’s no problem there.”

So I probably could have said, “This book is complete shit, but I recommend it!”, and she’d have given me an A-.

I didn’t like that teacher very much.

Books That Made Me Want to Have Sex with at Least One Character

I was all set to say “As if I’d ever think such a thing!”…and then I remember the wonderfully sensual Kushiel’s Dart. Sigh…and add Kushiel to my list of literary crushes up above. Can’t wait to resume this series in the fall.

Books I Actually Read but Got a Poorer Grade on the Paper I Wrote on the Subject Than My Best Friend Who Did Not Read the Book

This never happened, but see above on The Yearling.

Books I Read Because the Author Looked Hot

Huh?!

Books I’ve Read Aloud

Many with The Daughter! The Prydain Chronicles, the Dark is Rising Sequence, et cetera.

Sadly, The Daughter has reached the point where she likes to read her own stuff at bedtime, so Reading Aloud time has come to an end at Casa Jaquandor. Those will always be some of my fondest memories of this whole parenting gig.

Books I Love Even Though the Last Twenty Pages Made No Damn Sense

The Neal Stephenson novels I’ve read fall into this category. His endings just come out of nowhere, really. Most times, though, the endings “make sense” in that I understand what happens.

Books I Have Written a Prequel/Sequel to in My Own Head

I don’t think I’ve ever done this, really!

Books I Keep Meaning to Read, but Then I See Something Shiny

Well, my reading is all over the map. I could make a list of books I mean to read that would be hundreds of titles long. I rarely plan my reading; I just pick whatever looks like it may suit my mood from one book to the next.

Books I Will Go to the Mattresses for, Even Though I Hate the Writer

I can’t think of one, really. Maybe Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, which really is an awfully good summation of the pitfalls of writing both genres, even though I think Card is sufficiently loathsome that I can reasonably guarantee that I will never read any of his fiction, no matter how many people tell me how good Ender’s Game is. Way I see it, I’ll never have time to read all the books I want to read anyway, so if I don’t read Ender because Card is a homophobic lout, I don’t think my literary life will suffer.

Books You Must Read Because You Must Mock

I don’t do this. I never read anything because I expect to dislike it. That really seems like a cynical thing to do, and like a terrible waste of time. I even read Twilight hoping to like it — I love a well-written teen romance, and I love a good vampire story, after all.

Worst How-To Books Ever

Anything by Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

Books That Were on the ‘To Be Read’ List the Longest

Brothers K, maybe. I’ve been meaning to re-read David Copperfield for years, too. (Read it in ninth grade and didn’t like it, but I was in ninth grade and likely had difficultly, speaking in literary terms, of distinguishing between my arse and a hole in the ground.)

Books I Hated Having to Read in School, But Love Now

Shakespeare. I hated him at first. But then, I’ve always questioned the way we went about it: barely a month into ninth grade, and we’re handed Romeo and Juliet. We barely know anything about poetry, much less all that iambic pentameter, and none of it seems to make any sense. I warmed up to Shakespeare a little more each successive year.

(This is part of my half-baked hypothesis that maybe teaching literature should start with contemporary stuff and work backwards, getting to Shakespeare at the end of the year, rather than doing the forwards-chronologically thing which puts the Bard in the leadoff position.)

Books Whose References Have Worked Their Way into My Household Lexicon

Ummmm…I’m not sure on this.

Books I’ve Read Because I Liked Their Cover Design/Font

Lots of them! As I note above, it’s the covers that catch my eyes when I’m book shopping. Not every pretty cover I buy, but I do like to pick up books based on covers and look them over.

Books Which, When It Comes Right Down to It, I Would Have No Problem Burning

I’m still ripping on Twilight. But I can’t burn it; I sent it to SamuraiFrog. But who am I kidding? I would never burn a book, except for, possibly, old phone books that I might use for kindling.

Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes

The Call of Cthulhu. I was misinformed.

Books I Pretend to Like So People Won’t Think I’m a Snob, or Books I Pretend to Like So I Won’t Hurt Your Feelings

Oh, come on. That’s just dumb. I’ll admit to having had a passing fascination with Nicholas Sparks a while back (but I think that’s worn off, since I’ve come to realize that he’s basically the Funky Winkerbean of romance novels). And since a lot of the time I’m reading a space opera novel with exploding spaceships on the cover, or fantasy novels with sword-wielding strongmen on the cover, being thought a snob is the least of my worries!

Books with Covers So Embarrassing You Can’t Read Them in Public

None, really, although Christopher Moore’s You Suck has a fun cover to hold up whilst reading in public!

Books You Are Sorry You Didn’t Read Decades Ago

Any that were written decades ago!

Wow, that was a long quiz….

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I’ve wanted to read Empire Falls by Richard Russo for several years now, and when I saw a copy at the library book sale a few weeks ago, I snatched it up. Last week I plowed through it. With just a couple of misgivings, my main reaction is, “What a book.”

Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for 2001, and the award is well deserved. The book doesn’t tell a single story, but instead gives a picture of life in a small town in Maine – the Empire Falls of the title – which continues to struggle on even though its economy is barely on life support after all of its local industries have packed up and moved away. The point of view switches between a number of characters, but the main one we follow is Miles Roby, a lifelong resident of the town who runs the local diner (the Empire Grill), is divorcing his wife, and is trying to raise a daughter through the tough times of adolescence.

Empire Falls‘s story meanders a great deal, as well it should; life, real life, never really seems to have any actual direction, as much as we might wish otherwise, and any momentum tends to be more a matter of perception than reality. Russo’s novel, then, is more tapestry than plot-driven story, following the logical results of a group of quirky people interacting with one another over the years.

Russo demonstrates a keen understanding of the dynamics of a small town like Empire Falls: how everything is dominated by the rich person who still owns everything in town (or seems to), how the people who remain in the town in which they grew up find themselves continually reliving the social interactions they had in high school, which tend to be the same social interactions as the ones their parents endured in their high school years, and so on. The dream, for so many, becomes to simply to break the cycle by leaving town. Some make it, some don’t, and some leave town only to come back.

The town’s social life seems to revolve around two establishments, Miles’s Empire Grill and the bar run by his soon-to-be-former mother-in-law. Through it all, Miles tends to be deeply stoic, almost maddeningly accepting of his lot in life, no matter how many people tell him that he needs to stand up, fight for what he wants, or just leave the town entirely. His younger brother David is constantly lecturing Miles on the shortcomings of his approach to life; David is the person who is always asking, “Hey, did you do the thing we talked about yet”, only to be told by Miles in reply, “It wasn’t a good time” or “It was really awkward” or, just plain, “No, I didn’t get to it yet.”

One of the regulars of Miles’s diner is the loudmouth jerk who is set to marry his soon-to-be-ex, Janine, and Miles just stoically endures the continued presence of the guy who stole his wife. Miles even somehow manages to possibly lead on the crippled daughter of the rich woman who owns most of the town, a woman who happens to have been in love with Miles since high school.

And then there’s Miles’s father, Max, a ne’er-do-well who makes his way through life doing odd jobs and sponging off nearly everyone around him. Max is wise in his own way, but his wisdom is extremely hard to find underneath his constant stream of BS. It turns out, via flashbacks, that Max’s wife – Miles’s mother – had cheated on him once, while on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard with her son along for the ride. The identity of the man she cheated with turns out to be one of the book’s main secrets and revelations, which suddenly clarifies a lot of the dynamics between the various characters.

Russo’s women are also all sharply drawn: Janine Roby, who is divorcing Miles and remarrying a man she clearly doesn’t like, simply because he isn’t Miles; their daughter Tick (a nickname, obviously), who is shy and awkward in high school and yet somehow has caught the eye of the star football player (who happens to be the son of the town cop); Janine’s mother Bea, who runs the local tavern and who is constantly giving Janine very blunt advice about all the ways she is going wrong in her life. And above it all is Mrs. Whiting, the rich woman who dominates life in Empire Falls.

My only real problem with Empire Falls is that, while the first 400 pages or so of the book meander slowly through the life in this small town, in the last 100 momentum starts to build as the hand of plot starts to push things along. Through most of the book, it seems like a portrait of a town that we’re only getting to see for a short time, but at the end, Russo starts tying up plotlines. Most of these revelations are satisfactory, but I was never sure I even wanted resolutions to some of those threads. And I flat-out did not like the novel’s closing paragraphs, where one final character’s story is tied up in a way that I found at odds with the tone of the entire book to that point. It feels like the punchline to a black humor joke, and I definitely did not like it.

But the rest of the book is awfully good.

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